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Native Convert Forms Anti-spam Protection with Honeypot

Published in Convert Forms
Updated 17 Oct, 2024

Without you having to do a thing, Convert Forms is already protecting you from form spam submissions. Since version 2.1.0 a honeypot field is added to each form by default.

What's Honeypot?

Well, it has nothing to do with a cute bear. A honeypot is a field designed to catch spammers in the same way an actual pot of honey would catch flies. It's just a hidden field placed into every form and it's designed to make form submission fail if anything is entered into it.

The vast majority of spam submissions come from automated programs called spam bots. When they see a form, they are programmed to fill in every field. And, since they can't tell a honeypot from a normal field, the honeypot gets filled in and the form submission fails.

Where can I find the Honeypot option?

The Honeypot Anti-Spam protection is by default enabled on every single form. In case you'd like to make sure it's enabled, edit your form, click on the Behavior panel from the left toolbar and make sure the Enable Anti-Spam Honeypot option is set to Yes as shown in the picture below.

Joomla! Forms Honeypot Anti-spam Protection

Honeypots are highly effective and used by web security experts around the globe. There's a high probability that Convert Forms' native honeypot feature is all you need to prevent the majority of form spam.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I get an error saying "Honeypot field triggered" when I try to submit the form?

This issue may be caused by your browser's auto-completion features or a browser extension which is auto-filling every form field.
To test if that's the case you may need to disable auto-completion for the form or adjust your extension's configuration for the affected page. You can also visit your form in a private/incognito tab or use a second browser.
Lastly, if the issue persists you can always turn off the Honeypot Field.